Winning matches in Grand Slam men's singles: An analysis of player performance-related variables from 1991 to 2008

Abstract

This study examines factors that lead to winning matches in men's singles Grand Slam tennis, and proposes guidelines for coaches and professional tennis players both in training and preparation for Grand Slam competitions. Using longitudinal data between 1991 and 2008 retrieved from the official website of the Association of Tennis Professionals, we analysed player performance over 9,144 matches in men's singles Grand Slam tournaments. To predict match outcome, 16 variables were classified into one of three categories: player skills and performance, player characteristics and match characteristics. The three categories were entered sequentially into a logistic regression model to predict the dependent variable: the chance of winning a men's singles Grand Slam match. The final altered model explains 79.4% of the variance (Nagelkerke's pseudo R (2)) in match outcomes and correctly predicted 90.6% of cases. The importance of serving, receiving, and break points is further confirmed. The positive effect of stature diminishes when players are taller than 186 cm. We recommend more training in returning skills; to avoid overestimation of the positive impact of stature, left hand and professional experience; and that a male player begins his professional tennis career by participating in the US Open or Wimbledon.

Entering tennis men’s Grand Slams within the top-10 and its relationship with the fact of winning the tournament. [Acceder a los Grand Slams de tenis masculino desde el top-10 y su relación con el hecho de ganar el torneo].

“…increase of 15% in the predicted probability for the 1 st ranked player relative to the 11 th ranked player vs. increase of 2% when comparing the 51 st and 61 st players in the ranking). Ma, Liu, Tan and Ma (2013) examined the potential factors that lead to winning matches in men's singles Grand Slams. The authors provided a logistic regression model that predicted the winners in more than 90% of cases and identified specific predictive performance characteristics of match outcomes (e.g.…”

Exploring match performance of elite tennis players : the multifactorial game-related effects in Grand Slams

“…The disagreement between the current study with the previous research could be attributed to the difference of court surfaces samples studied. As Wimbledon is a fast-pace tournament played on grass court, matches are finished in less time with fewer shot exchanges (Ma et al, 2013;O'Donoghue & Ingram, 2001). Therefore, players could get recovered from the last point and focus on their serving strategy, thus resulting in a constant serving behavior.…”

“…In order to maximize the chances of winning a match, the importance of these factors should be reinforced and logically, their influence have been investigated to give coaches and players more evidence while setting up strategies. But unfortunately, most existing studies considered the merely general match performance of players and tried to determine the key performance indicators without exploring the effects of contextual variables (Filipcic et al, 2015;Ma, Liu, Tan, & Ma, 2013;Reid, Morgan, & Whiteside, 2016). Therefore, the applicability and usefulness of future research will be enhanced if those multifactorial influences are considered.…”

“…Contrary to the expectation, most existing literature exclusively focused on reporting the general match performance of players (Ma et al, 2013;Reid et al, 2016), failing to evaluate how different technical, tactical and physical variables were influenced within prolonged time or days as tennis is played as a tournament format. In light of this issue, several studies have attempted to assess how well-trained players' physiological and technical performance were influenced during simulated tournament that lasted 3 to 4 days with a match duration of 2 to 4 hours (Gescheit et al, 2015;Gescheit et al, 2016;Ojala & Häkkinen, 2013).…”

“…The complexity and dynamics of tennis determine that player's game strategy and technicaltactical performance are critically influenced by a range of contextual-related constraints (Filipcic, Leskosek, & Filipcic, 2017;Ojala & Häkkinen, 2013;Pereira et al, 2018). The available research already evidenced that those constraints might be originated from the differences of match location (O'Donoghue & Ingram, 2001), players' qualities (Cui, Gómez, Gonçalves, Liu, & Sampaio, 2017) and weather condition of which players were conscious prior to a match (Morante & Brotherhood, 2007); and from the uncertainty of opponent's actual tactics (Ma et al, 2013), match score-line (O'Donoghue, 2012), spatial-temporal relationship among players and ball (Carvalho et al, 2013;Martinez-Gallego et al, 2013), physiological fatigue (Gomes et al, 2011;Reid & Duffield, 2014), noise of the audience (Dube & Tatz, 1991) and even the line-calling bias from referees that occurred within the match (Carboch et al, 2016). Therefore, adjusting to the constant change of those constraints and making correspondent tactical decisions should be an essential attribute reinforced in the development of professional tennis players (Murray & Hunfalvay, 2017;Triolet, Benguigui, Le Runigo, & Williams, 2013).…”